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Third Generation Gangs Strategic Note No. 5: Brazilian Military Stability and Support Operations

Third Generation Gangs Strategic Note No. 5: Brazilian Military Stability and Support Operations (SASO) in Rio de Janeiro’s Favelas

John P. Sullivan and Robert J. Bunker

High intensity gang battles and endemic insecurity have severely challenged the ability of the police to ensure order and contain violence in Rio de Janeiro. After 100 police officers were killed this year though August 2017, state authorities requested the assistance of the federal armed forces. This infusion of military forces to establish stability and support policing demonstrates the challenges posed by entrenched gangs in the favelas and raises concerns about the militarization of policing in Brazil.

More than 3,500 Brazilian soldiers are occupying a series of slum communities in northern Rio de Janeiro as part of efforts to combat a spike in violence.

The troops moved into the Complexo do Lins communities and neighboring Camarista Meier in the early hours of Saturday. Defense Minister Raul Jungmann told Globo TV that the troops would stay there as long as necessary

Last week 8,500 soldiers were deployed in Rio to fight organized crime gangs, which control many of the city’s slums.

Brazilian television showed soldiers armed with automatic rifles sitting atop tanks as they patrolled the communities.

Mounting violence in Rio has led authorities to acknowledge in recent weeks that much of the city is out of their control.

The Armed Forces are back on the streets of Rio de Janeiro for Operation “Rio Quer Segurança e Paz (Rio wants Security and Peace).” Since the United Nations Conference on the Environment & Development, or Rio 92, the Armed Forces have undertaken overt police missions in Rio de Janeiro to ensure security at major events on at least six occasions (Rio + 20 in 2012, World Youth Day in 2013, the 2013 FIFA Confederations Cup, the 2014 FIFA World Cup, the 2015 World Military Games, and the 2016 Olympic Games). At other times, the Armed Forces have been called in to pacify slum communities, such as Alemão complex in 2010, and Maré complex in 2014.

In these cases, the Armed Forces operate within the legal limits of Law and Order Assurance (GLO, per its Portuguese acronym) operations under presidential decrees, when the resources of traditional law enforcement agencies are stretched to the limit or in severe situations of public disorder. GLO provides military forces with temporary authorization to operate with police powers for a limited time. Although these operations are generally successful, the reality is that once the Armed Forces leave the area of operations, the initial problems quickly return. Accordingly, the federal government has promised that this time, the operations will be different. The Armed Forces will provide support to state and federal security forces in order to defeat criminal organizations…

Intelligence, integration, and surprise

For this purpose, the Armed Forces have formed a joint staff at the Eastern Military Command Headquarters, in Rio de Janeiro, to plan integrated operations to be undertaken by the three branches. An intelligence unit has been formed in the state, in which general officers from the Army, Navy, and Air Force work together with the Brazilian Intelligence Agency, the Federal Police, and other state and municipal law enforcement agencies. Under the current decree, the operation will last until December 31st, but the federal government has emphasized that this deadline was a bureaucratic requirement and that it will be extended until the end of 2018…

After almost a week of intense gun battles between rival drug gangsters and the police, Brazil’s army has been deployed to encircle the sprawling Rocinha favela in Rio de Janeiro.

A spokesperson for military command said on Friday that airspace over the neighbourhood had been closed, and local media showed images of soldiers arriving in the community.

Fighting flared up on Friday morning and a widely circulated video showed gunmen in shorts firing machine guns, rifles and pistols in an alleyway.

Piles of garbage were set on fire on Rocinha streets, and schools, businesses and a major road tunnel closed. Residents told the Guardian they have been cowering indoors, exchanging information via social media and WhatsApp…

…Brazil’s Defense Minister Raul Jungmann told reporters that the armed forces are deploying 950 troops to encircle the favela in response to a request from the state government of Rio de Janeiro. There have been at least four deaths because of the fighting within the favela in recent days.

Jungmann is proposing the creation of a federal task force to combat what he describes as “a parallel state that exists today in Rio,” according to Brazil's UOL News.

Rio’s police launched a “pacification” program as part of a drive to push out drug gangs from the favelas, and establish peace ahead of the 2014 soccer World Cup and last year's Olympic Games.

This has unraveled. Analysts say it's partly because the state government is bankrupt and has failed to pay police salaries on time, but also because of a political crisis in which a large number of Brazil’s political leaders have been exposed as corrupt.

Shootings—usually drug-related—have become a daily event in some of the city's favelas, and are a major reason that the murder rate in the state of Rio de Janeiro last year was over 6,200. Violence has also this year claimed the lives of 103 police officers…

Third Generation Gang Analysis

Brazil’s favelas are contested zones. This is especially the case in Rio de Janeiro where residents are caught in the crossfire between the police and gangs.[1] Rio’s murder rate is the highest in decades with over 5,000 murdered in 2006 alone.[2] Gun battles rage between heavily armed police, drug trafficking groups, gangsters, and militias as gains made by UPPs (Police Pacification Units or Unidades de Polícia Pacificadora) ebbed after the 2016 Rio Olympics.[3] Police corruption and brutality—when combined with a lack of resources, endemic crime and gang violence linked to the drug trade—has led to a hyper-violent situation where gangs and the police compete for control of the streets. The result is a deadly, high intensity turf war or criminal insurgency.

Over 100 police have been killed in 2017.[4] The police—Rio’s Polícia Militar, a state paramilitary force serving as uniformed preventive police—are severely challenged and state authorities requested federal military support to help restore order. Federal troops were deployed to support the police with patrols, assistance at special operations, and by developing intelligence capabilities. This infusion of federal capacity is designed not only to stabilize the endemic crime and resurgent state of gang warfare and insecurity but also is intended to help restore confidence in the police.[5] Rio’s police, after a brief adoption of community policing tactics and UPP pacification/stabalization efforts, lost control of the situation as warring gangs returned to the once-pacified favelas, rival gangs resumed skirmishing and turf battles, and police returned to repressive tactics.[6]

The infusion of military forces into civil policing raises several concerns. First it signals a weakness and lack of capacity among civil police that could led to the erosion of normal policing that can, in turn, challenge state legitimacy in contested areas. This lack of capacity/legitimacy among civil police could strengthen the perceived legitimacy and actual freedom of action among gangs (specifically, third generation gangs) performing proto-state functions such as local security, conflict resolution and street taxation.[7] The use of militarized public security options has been criticized as being repressive and for exacerbating the exploitation of the poor in favelas (slums) in a manner that encourages armed confrontation and stimulates violence.[8]

While the deployment of military forces to support police in the restoration of order (essentially SASOs) is often a necessary measure to limit insecurity and enable the reform of civil police capability, it can also raise several challenges. First military forces often lack in-depth training for conducting prolonged community policing operations, especially in urban areas. They are also prone to criticism for human rights violations that can arise due to the complexities (especially the lack of distinction) when operating in areas where armed groups are closely situated with civilians and can be corrupted by gangsters seeking to avoid justice.[9] A recent case in point is the live Facebook streaming of the engagement of a carload of suspected drug gang members in Rio by semi-automatic fires from a police helicopter killing three of them.[10]

Concerns about the corroding effect of corruption are a significant concern in Brazil’s urban conflict. In Rio, the Polícia Militar (PM) have been linked to indiscriminate violence and endemic corruption. Most recently they have been accused by Brazil’s federal justice minister of colluding with organized crime, including performing a recent gang style execution of a PM battalion commander. Accordingly, a recent opinion piece by Michael Royster in The Rio Times stated that “declaration astonished all local Rio politicians, from the Governor right on down through state and municipal legislators. Why? Because the PM are entirely civilian—NOT military—organizations, and PM commanders are (theoretically) controlled by the state governor and his Secretary of Public Safety.”[11]

This corruption, insecurity, and policing crisis contribute to Rio’s insecurity. It has also fueled to the rise of vigilante militias that are closely linked to former PM, military, and prison guards. That same op-ed on Rio’s situation observes, “Everybody in Rio has long known that, although originally thought to be a form of combating the drug lords, the militias are now identical to the gangs—offering “protection” while demanding rake-offs from local businesses, not to mention making deals with organized crime, dividing up the favelas among themselves rather than fighting over territories.”[12] Such vigilante militias form during vacuums in effective policing of communities when impunity levels rise—historically, they emerged in both Colombia during the 1980s and much more recently in Mexico when the state has lost control over its monopoly on internal coercive violence vis-à-vis emergent criminal insurgents.

The endemic insecurity and corruption enabling the violence and stressing civil policing and governance is a threat to democratic processes and the rule of law. Brazilians are increasingly skeptical about the ability of the judiciary to route out corruption and the police to secure the streets. When combined with criminal enclaves (gang dominated areas), economic inequality, and a stagnant economy, authoritarian and populist tendencies start to become attractive.[13]

Finally, the militarization of policing also begins to become attractive when gang and organized crime (criminal cartel) activity and violence spirals out of control and gangsters actively confront the state and attack police. This has led to the introduction of the military into policing in Mexico and other parts of Latin America. As previously mentioned, this is often because the police are outgunned and the military is the only viable tool for stabilizing the situation. In Rio, the situation has been described as one where police acted like occupying armies and “Often clashes between Rio’s gangs and the police resemble an open war, like Syria, rather than a policing action. In response to the militarisation of Brazil’s police, Rio’s infamous drug gangs increased their firepower, arming themselves with machine guns and rocket launchers—even shooting down police helicopters.”[14] Some analysts would now agree that such high intensity gun battles as are taking place in Rio should be considered ‘armed conflict’ even though the causalities are listed as homicides rather than wartime military deaths.[15]

Yet, military approaches—even in circumstances approaching de facto low intensity Non-International Armed Conflict (NIACs)[16]—are unable to solve endemic social problems. They can establish the stability needed to enable the institution of community policing and civil governance but they can’t do so on their own. This challenge is not unique to Brazil (nor Mexico and Latin America); extreme gangsterism in Cape Town, South Africa has led to calls for introducing SANDF (the South African National Defence Force) as a stabilization force.[17] Addressing the security concerns of crime wars, criminal insurgency is a salient and global issue.

[16] The existence of a state of Non-International Armed Conflict (NIAC) as opposed to situations of internal disturbances and isolated sporadic acts is ambiguous and contentious. The determination is derived from an assessment of Common Article 3 and Additional Protocol II of the Geneva Conventions based upon the intensity of the violence, the character, and degree of territorial control exercised by the armed groups involved, civilians feeing conflict zones, etc. The inability of the police to manage the situation and the introduction of military forces could be an indicator of the existence of a NIAC. For a pertinent discussion, see Carrie A. Comer and Daniel M. Mburu, “Humanitarian Law at Wits’ End: Does the Violence Arising from the ‘War on Drugs’” in “Mexico Meet the International Criminal Court’s Non-International Armed Conflict Threshold?” In: Terry D. Gill (ed.) Yearbook of International Humanitarian Law, Volume 18, 2015. The Hague: T.M.C. Asser Press, The Hague, 2016.

About the Author(s)

Dr. Robert J. Bunker is an Adjunct Research Professor, Strategic Studies Institute, US Army War College and Adjunct Faculty, Division of Politics and Economics, Claremont Graduate University. He holds university degrees in political science, government, social science, anthropology-geography, behavioral science, and history and has undertaken hundreds of hours of counterterrorism training. Past professional associations include Distinguished Visiting Professor and Minerva Chair at the Strategic Studies Institute, U.S. Army War College; Futurist in Residence, Training and Development Division, Behavioral Science Unit, Federal Bureau of Investigation Academy, Quantico, VA; Staff Member (Consultant), Counter-OPFOR Program, National Law Enforcement and Corrections Technology Center-West; and Adjunct Faculty, National Security Studies M.A. Program and Political Science Department, California State University, San Bernardino, CA. Dr. Bunker has hundreds of publications including Studies in Gangs and Cartels, with John Sullivan (Routledge, 2013), Red Teams and Counterterrorism Training, with Stephen Sloan (University of Oklahoma, 2011), and edited works, including Global Criminal and Sovereign Free Economies and the Demise of the Western Democracies: Dark Renaissance (Routledge, 2014), co-edited with Pamela Ligouri Bunker; Criminal Insurgencies in Mexico and the Americas: The Gangs and Cartels Wage War (Routledge, 2012); Narcos Over the Border: Gangs, Cartels and Mercenaries (Routledge, 2011); Criminal-States and Criminal-Soldiers (Routledge, 2008); Networks, Terrorism and Global Insurgency (Routledge, 2005); and Non-State Threats and Future Wars (Routledge, 2002).

John P. Sullivanwas a career police officer. He is an honorably retired lieutenant with the Los Angeles Sheriff’s Department, specializing in emergency operations, transit policing, counterterrorism, and intelligence. He is currently an Instructor in the Safe Communities Institute (SCI) at the Sol Price School of Public Policy - University of Southern California, Senior El Centro Fellow at Small Wars Journal, and Member of the Scientific Advisory Board of the Global Observatory of Transnational Criminal Networks. Sullivan received a lifetime achievement award from the National Fusion Center Association in November 2018 for his contributions to the national network of intelligence fusion centers. He is co-editor of Blood and Concrete: 21st Century Conflict in Urban Centers and Megacities (Xlibris, 2019), Countering Terrorism and WMD: Creating a Global Counter-Terrorism Network (Routledge, 2006) and Global Biosecurity: Threats and Responses (Routledge, 2010), Studies in Gangs and Cartels (Routledge, 2013), and The Rise of The Narcostate (Mafia States) (Xlibris, 2018), and co-author of Mexico’s Criminal Insurgency: A Small Wars Journal-El Centro Anthology (iUniverse, 2011). He completed the CREATE Executive Program in Counter-Terrorism at the University of Southern California and holds a Bachelor of Arts in Government from the College of William and Mary, a Master of Arts in Urban Affairs and Policy Analysis from the New School for Social Research, and a PhD from the Open University of Catalonia (Universitat Oberta de Catalunya). His doctoral thesis was “Mexico’s Drug War: Cartels, Gangs, Sovereignty and the Network State.” His current research focus is the impact of transnational organized crime on sovereignty in Mexico and other countries.

Comments

Statements like the one below concern me, because more often than not they're reflexive statements void of context.

"and raises concerns about the militarization of policing in Brazil"

While civil countries certainly don't want their military to replace their police as a matter of course. The main concern should be re-establishing security and control where criminal organizations and gangs have overwhelmed the ability of the police to effectively enforce the law. Bringing the military in to impose law and order is a rationale decision in these cases, unlike the irrational decision of employing heavily armed SWAT teams in the U.S. to take down relatively small fry criminals.

It is also true, that in situations where the criminals outgun the local police and outspend the local government, that local law enforcement frequently becomes corrupted. Again bringing in the military or federal police is a rational decision. Simply hiring more police is not the answer, because most developing nations do not have the resources to maintain adequate defense and police forces. Furthermore, more arrests simply overwhelm an already overburdened justice system, and one must question what percentage of these thugs are actually prosecuted successfully?

The last sentence in this article is the key take away in my view, "Addressing the security concerns of crime wars, criminal insurgency is a salient and global issue." Having worked in a lot of countries where the criminal and terrorist threat far exceeds the capacity of law enforcement, it is frustrating to see the U.S. Department of State blindly attempt to impose a law enforcement solution as though they are advising the governments of Utah or Nebraska, instead of the governments in the Philippines, Nigeria, or Mexico as examples. New thinking is required to address this threat, not simply imposing failed legalistic paradigms based on our ideological bias of what we think right looks like.